Text Type and the Position of a Temporal Adverbial Within the Sentence

Abstract

Consider example (a), below. When the temporal adverbial since 1992 is in sentence-final position as in (i.a), it can attach syntactically at the VP-level or at sentence-level:

i. a. Mary has worked in Amsterdam since 1992.

b. Since 1992 Mary has worked in Amsterdam.

Hitzeman (1993, 1997) argues that these different positions allow it to take on two readings: one in which there was some period between 1992 and speech time during which Mary worked in Amsterdam and another in which Mary has worked in Amsterdam for the period from 1992 until speech time. In contrast, sentence (i.b), in which the adverbial must attach at sentence-level, has only the second reading. If an initial-position adverbial unambiguously specifies the time of the event expressed by a sentence, then it should be a useful tool for a reader trying to determine the order of events in a narrative. To test the hypothesis that initial-position adverbials occur more often in texts describing events with some temporal order (i.e., a story line), I compare the use of these adverbials in narrative text and in non-narratives. The results show that significantly more initial-position adverbials are used in narratives. I then test the individual narratives and show that the significant difference in use of initial-position adverbials is correlated with the amount of flashback material in a narrative, i.e., with the complexity of the story line.

This work was done for ESPRIT Basic Research project DANDELION, funded by the European Union.